Archives for August 2016

IMO it is time to retire the Road Warrior nickname, at least temporarily. NYC has earned only 5 points in the last 6 games, and only 2 in the last 4. Also, the home PPG is now higher than the road PPG. 1.54 to 1.50. There are 3 games left to earn it back. We might not even finish with the best road record in the league if we don’t turn it around. We have 21 road points but Toronto has 19 and Dallas 17.

1 point out of a possible 9 against Orlando this year.

Yesterday I was bullish on Supporters Shield, now it seems a fantasy. We’re 7 points behind Dallas with 7 to play; 2 points behind Colorado who has 2 games in hand; 2 behind both Toronto and RSL also with 7 to play. Even if we start improving, that’s a lot of teams to overcome.

Since the 4-game win streak the team is at 1.38 PPG over 8 games: 3-3-2. Due to the slump in Away results NYC is in a moderate slump overall.

Record against the West 5-2-1 2.00 PPG
Record against the East 6-6-7 1.32 PPG.

Playoff clinching update: there is a minimum of 6 games combined needed to clinch finishing ahead of DC. For Orlando and Columbus the number is 5. For Chicago and New England it is 4.

With only 1 win in the last 4 games, the top few lines on the revised optimistic what-we-need-to-do chart are looking pretty iffy right now:

With 7 games left, the projection gets less and less trustworthy as a couple of unexpected results can alter everything, but here it is for archival purposes at least:

In sum:

First overall is a very long shot.

First in the East is getting a bit suspect.

If the team does not turn around its recent road woes, they could easily drop to fourth fast.

Season To Date
East Record 27-33-29
At Home 21-8-16 (45 games)
On Road 6-25-13 (44 games)
Goal Differential -8
East Points 110
West Points 128

East has not lost for 9 straight games, but only have 4 wins against 5 ties in that run.
At the moment, the East is doing better than it did last year relative to the West. The East PPG is 1.24 which is the same the East had at the end of 2015, but the West PPG is down from 1.57 to 1.44.

On August 1 I wrote: “Toronto’s schedule is so weird, and more imbalanced than ours. Ours evened up last week, and we never go more than +/-1 H/A the rest of the year. TFC almost but not quite gets even this week, but then 4 of their next 5 are on the road, and then they finish with 5 of their last 6 at home. And their opponents in those last 5 home games are terrible on the road. If Toronto can get through the 4 of 5 Away stretch and are close to us with 6 remaining they will be in very good shape.’

Toronto just got 7 points in just the first 3 of those 5 games. First Place is looking pretty damn unlikely right now, unless Toronto suddenly collapses, and soon, or NYC wins out. Damn.

This site seems to have resumed regular updates:http://www.sportsclubstats.com/USA/NYCFC.html
It says NYCFC needs 60 points to have a better than 50% chance at Supporters Shield, 55 points is 50%+ to finish first in the East, and 52 points to finish at least second and get a bye.

http://playoffstatus.com/mls/easternstandings.html has Toronto at 43% to win the East, NYC at 37%, and RB at 9%.
NYC’s chance of finishing first or second is up to 71%. I have to think 5-6% of that is thanks to Patrick Mullins last night. What an awesome trade.

NYCFC averages 3.0 PPG without Patrick Vieira as gameday coach in 2016, and only 1.46 with him. Something needs to be done about this.

Strength of Schedule In sum, we have the easiest schedule based on opponent records and Toronto has advantage of the best Home/Away setup. Here’s how the contenders compare on H/A:

NYC 4H 4A
TOR 6H 3A
RB 5H 3A
PHI 4H 5A
MTL 5H 5A

Based on strength of schedule, the H/A, current point totals and recent form, I see the teams with a shot of finishing first in the East, in order of likelihood, as Toronto, NYC, and RB. I see a small gap between Toronto and NYC, very close to 50-50, and a bigger gap between NYC and RB. Anybody else is a very long shot. Even RB is starting to look iffy. Even if they catch NYC there is still Toronto and vice-versa, and the time is running short to catch 2 teams.

Toronto and NJRB have the 2 longest undefeated streaks in MLS right now. RB is 3-0-5 in their last 8 which is the longest streak. That’s only so-so for an undefeated streak but they are killer at home and have 5 of 8 in Harrison which is their only hope. Toronto is 5-0-1 in the last 6. They are 6-1-3 in the last 10. They lost 4 times in their first 10 games and 3 times in the last 15. Getting that win in Philly was huge for them. They are tied with Dallas and RSL for second most road wins and have the most favorable H/A variance remaining. We need someone to step up and stop them. We might need to be rooting for the Red Bulls on September 18. Whether you pick Toronto or NYC for first in the East arguably comes down to whether you think they are just on a hot streak that can end without warning, or you think they’ve put it all together at the right time and will finish just as strong.

Playoff clinching update: there is a minimum of 6 games combined needed to clinch finishing ahead of Columbus, DC and Orlando. For New England and Chicago the number is 5. Every time one of these teams gets a result pushes that further away, but also very likely helps us against the other top contenders.

A Historic Line Crossing: for the first time in NYCFC history the team has more points than the projected playoff line. The latter stands at 40 and NYC has 41 points. If the team were to lose out there’s a decent chance they would still make the playoffs.

Record against the West 5-2-1 2.00 PPG
Record against the East 6-5-7 1.39 PPG

NYC’s Home record is now effectively the same as its Away. They played 13 at Home and 13 Away and have earned 20 points at Home and 21 Away. In terms of statistical confidence that’s a meaningless difference. The last 5 games trend heavily favors Home: 4-1-0 2.4 PPG against 1-2-2- Away 1.0 PPG. These are guesses, but I think there’s roughly a 50% chance NYC wins out at home, and maybe a 10-20% chance they get no more road wins.

Figuring a way to get five wins gets a minimum of 56 points. I think the First Place line is likely to be right near there at the least. I very much doubt it will be lower, as that requires that both Toronto and NYC slip. If Toronto stays hot or NYC starts a streak, it could be higher.

The last two weeks have tightened things up in the East to the point where the projected PPG for the top 5 teams shows a 5 point spread from 48 to 52 at season end. Anything less than a win against LA gives 2 teams (Toronto and RB) the chance to climb ahead of us in the standings, and Philly and Montreal can get within a game while having games in hand. This cannot all happen because TFC and the Union play each other.

Unlike the weather, NYC is not hot right now. Bluebirds are 6-2-2 in the last 10 but 2-1-2 in the last 5 and 2-2-2 in the last 6. The 4-game win streak is about to come off the 10-game record with each coming game. PlayoffStatus.com has dropped the odds of finishing 1 or 2 to 49%, the first time it’s been below 50% in 3 weeks. I can’t say they’re wrong. Still, the team still has second best odds for that. Right now only TFC is above 50% at 54% and NJRB is at 31%.

The club’s “Road Warrior” reputation is based on a single 5-game stretch. NYC started the season 1-2-0 Away. Then undefeated in 5 with 4 wins at 4-0-1. Since then NYC is 1-2-2 on the road. Outside of the 5-game unbeaten streak, NYC has earned 1.0 PPG over 8 games, During those 5 games, NYC earned 2.6 PPG, and at one point was at 2.0 for the season including the first 3.

Still, most teams would love to have 1.0 PPG on the road in all their games and NYC is at 1.62 overall. NYC will also still probably have the best Away record in the league. Dallas and the Galaxy are closest and both need to do better than they have to date to catch the Gotham Blues even if NYC gets 0 road points the rest of the way.

NYC has played more Away games than Home for the first time since Game 1 March 6. Between June 18 and August 20 they will have played just 2 home games in 2 months.

How close are the Pigeons to clinching a playoff spot? About 4 weeks at the minimum. City clinches when it has more points than the maximum possible points for 4 East teams. Chicago’s maximum points is 55, New England and Columbus 56, DC and Orlando 60. City has 38. It will take a minimum of 6 games to bridge those gaps with the Fire, Revs and Crew, and 8 games for DC and Orlando. Any game involving them or us counts; a game between any one of them and the Blue Notes counts as 2. But any time we drop points or they win points extends it. Even though we are a near lock for the playoffs, we probably won’t clinch until the end of September.

Last year the Robber Barons played in the black secondary six times by Game 25, which was actually behind the pace for the year. They wore that kit 10 times overall. This year we have seen the HypnoKit just 3 times, and none of the remaining Away games seem to require it. This only has playoff implications for the hyper-superstitious.

Draws make for boring updates to the what needs to be done chart. Also, we have now drawn more times than all of last year.

Fully revised and updated to reflect a more realistic set of possibilities. It’s nice to see we’ve completely outgrown the set of concerns and expectations we had preseason and early season. Really, looking at these lines it is hard to imagine us not getting at least to the low-50s. Getting just three more wins at this point would be a collapse.

Looking at NYCFC’s remaining schedule I would like to see them get 18 more points, 55 total.

Home: A team with our record that seems to have fixed its home woes should win 4 of its last 5 at home, even with 2 of them against good teams.
Away: A team with our Away record should manage 2 more wins in 5 tries. We’ve already won 3 Away games against teams with only one other home loss. Plus DC is only so-so at home.
Six wins. 18 new points. 55 total. If NYC does worse than this I think it’s a disappointment based on current expectations. Based on preseason hopes, it can still be a wild success.
Bonus Stretch Goal: Throw in 2 draws from the other 4 games for 6-2-2, 2.0 PPG over the final stretch. 57 Points total and I think it’s a near certainty we finish top 2 in the East. It’s very doable.

Before starting, remember we probably lose a tiebreaker if we end up even on points with anyone. Anyone who ties us will probably end up with at least the same number of wins and they all beat us on GD absent some giant wins by NYC.

Winning the Supporters Shield will take extraordinary results. There are now 6 teams in contention, which makes climbing to the top of the pile that much harder unless you are already there. Dallas has a 7-point lead on us with 10 to play. That doesn’t sound too bad considering we play them right? If we win we only have to pick up 5 points in the other 9 games.

Let’s say we do something amazing like finish 7-1-1 in the other 9 games and end up with 62 points. DFC can get 62 points by going 6-3-0 in their other 9. Overall that’s 18 points in their last 10 games which is 1.8 PPG which is in line with what they have done all season. Anything worse than 8-1-1 from NYC, and Dallas is almost a sure thing to stay ahead of us, and if they really stumble, we still have to contend with the other 4 contenders. If you want to believe, go ahead. It can happen, but realize it is a very big ask.

When NJRB was winning 2-0 last night this was shaping up to be just about the worst possible weekend of results. TFC won twice, Montreal won, and Philly managed a road draw. LA’s ability to grab the draw back from the Scarlett Steers was really big for us, as a road win in LA would have put the Red Bulls just 2 points behind us and suddenly able to beat strong teams Away. That was kind of scary to contemplate. They’re not out of it, and I would have preferred a loss, but those extra two points make a big difference and I think with our easier schedule we should stay ahead of RBNJ.

During a hot, lazy Sunday, I went through the remaining schedules of the top 5 East teams using these parameters: What if NYC performs at the low end of its current form, while everyone else performs at the upper end of their current form. If any team goes on a tear or collapses then they easily win or drop out of contention so that’s not worth measuring.

For NYC, I started by assuming we lose the 3 toughest games: LAG and DFC at home and ORL on the road. We win the other 3 Home and go 2-1-1 in the other 4 Away games. That comes to 16 points in 10 games, 1.6 PPG and what I would consider a moderately disappointing finish to the season. Even though 1.6 is slightly better than the current average to date, with the schedule we have and the team’s form since game 8, we should do better. But it’s not disastrously bad, and NYC finishes with 53 total points.

I’ll skip the game-by-game for the other teams, but when I ran through the TFC schedule assuming they do well but not amazing, they finish 6-2-3 for 21 points in 11 games and 1.91 PPG, and 57 total points. That leaves a 4 point edge for TFC. Rounding it out, Montreal and the Red Bulls both ended up with 52, and the Union with 51.

It’s all rather meaningless, except this: with so much close competition NYC probably needs to win at least 6 of the last 10 to finish first. Moreover, If TFC gets just 7 or 8 points in their next 5 tough games they are in very good shape even if NYC gets 18-20 more points overall. TFC is very likely to get 12 points in their last 6, with 5 of them at home against weak road teams. So 8 + 12 would mean 20 points in their last 11 and 56 total. NYC needs to go 6-2-2 to beat that. That’s doable, but I’d feel a lot better if TFC gets say, 5 or 6 points in the next 5 games.

The PPG standings:

What we need to do to get certain results.

I haven’t changed this chart since I started the thread except to adjust for updated results. Midweek I think I will revise the lines and scenarios altogether. For one, because NYC went 9 straight games without a draw some of the remaining possibilities seem ridiculous. I suppose we could go 3-2-5 but it’s not worth tracking. Second, I should probably drop some lines from the bottom and add some to the top. At this point any of the results below 47 points would be too disastrous to contemplate.

PPG Roundup:
Against the East 1.41
Against the West 1.86
Home 1.42
Away 1.67
First 8 games: 0.88
Since game 8 1.88
First 15 games 1.20
Since game 15 2.0
First Half: 1.41
Second Half 1.86

Final fun fact: NYCFC right now has the same number of both wins and draws as all of last year, and 10 fewer losses.